by Sophia Tobin
Jonathan ate on in silence, and the others sat quietly with him. Darkness was falling, the early darkness of an autumn evening with the lights kept off. The Stair Hall seemed to contract in the fading light, the coloured marble walls fading into shadow, and as the light dwindled the occupants finally left it and went into the basement.
Mr Whitewood was looking with curiosity around the basement vaults that had been adapted as their living quarters when they heard the wail of the air-raid sirens.
Bill came running down the stairs. ‘Planes!’ he called. ‘I’ll put the electricity off.’ Then he saw Mr Whitewood. His hand went to his tieless throat. Livy felt a sudden pang of affection for him, entwined with pity. A sudden reminder of the old life had left him exposed, dressed in his overall with his collar button undone. ‘Sir,’ Bill said.
It was then Livy remembered Woman and Looking Glass, and the tension she felt tipped over some invisible line. In that moment, it became simply unbearable. She rose suddenly from her chair.
‘What is it, dear?’ Peggy had paused in the middle of the washing-up, her face kind, softened like someone regarding a startled animal.
Livy stared at her. ‘Woman and Looking Glass,’ she said.
‘We said to you, dear, it’s perfectly safe where it is. There’s no glass near it. What’s this sudden fret? You’ve been fine about it for weeks.’
‘I’ll just get it,’ Livy said.
‘What’s all this?’ Whitewood extinguished his cigarette. ‘Did you mention Woman and Looking Glass? Presumably it was sent to safe keeping with the treasury?’
Livy glanced at him. ‘No, it’s upstairs in the hall. I have to get it.’
The first distant thud shook the ground beneath their feet.
‘Not now. Tomorrow.’ Mrs Holliday turned away to stow the plate. ‘We need to go into the shelter and shut the doors. Quickly.’ She glanced at their guest. ‘She is suffering from shock, sir, she has these sudden fits about things.’
‘It can be moved tomorrow,’ Whitewood said firmly. ‘I understand your concern, so we’ll do it first thing. I really can’t think why it wasn’t sent to Sussex with everything else. Don’t go,’ he said as she moved across the room. ‘Can’t you hear them?’
But with exasperation Livy shook off their words. ‘I’m going to get it.’ She went past Bill and out towards the stairs.
Whitewood watched her go. Then he looked at Mrs Holliday. ‘Is she quite right in the head?’ he said. He unclenched his hand, and put his cigarette lighter down on the table with a clatter, harder than he’d intended to.
*
Livy’s eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness of the Stair Hall. As she came out of the green door from the basement she could see reasonably well in the gloom of the vast space. Searchlights, or bomber’s moon, she was not sure.
The first detonation took her to her knees on the stone floor and she curled up like a netsuke. Just for a moment; just as she waited to see if the building would fall down on her head. The sound was so vast that she assumed they had taken a direct hit; the noise in the room was inseparable from the noise in her head. She covered her ears but it was there, nonetheless. She thought how the reinforced basement shelter had protected them, all these nights.
Then there was a brief space between noises and she got to her feet, her legs as unsteady as a calf’s. Why did she think of that? Sickly, she was made of marrow. More light – our lights or theirs, she wondered. The retort of ack-ack guns into the sky. She was on her feet again. The moonlight shone in from the demi-lune of grating beneath the dome. It cast sharp ornamental shadows of the grillwork, black tendrils cutting through the white gaze of the moon. She put her hand out and touched the column of a lamp as she passed, unlit of course in the blackout, but the moonlight glanced off its ormolu frame.
She stumbled towards the painting. But then something made her turn and look behind her; a shadow moving out of the shadows. It was Whitewood, running towards her, his hands up as though he wished to push her forwards. She remembered his slow, careful walk from the front door; the way he held his cigarette; the sardonic turn of his mouth. She had not thought him capable of moving at this speed. His mouth was moving but she could not hear his words.
The room was filled with the sound of planes, of bombs, of war: the roar of it, the scream of it.
She landed against the far wall, Whitewood behind her. She felt his hands on her shoulders pulling her around the corner and pushing her forwards against the wall. The press of the cold marble against her face. His body was over hers, his arms either side against her shoulders, holding her still. She was not trembling and she was glad of it in that moment; almost proud. She turned her face amid the roar of the bombers. She saw the chandelier, suspended from a metal chain below the dome, the Victorian crystal shrouded by white sheets. The demi-lune glass blew in; a flying piece of debris sheered the metal chain and the chandelier fell. It bounced off the first flight of steps and lurched onto the floor with hideous momentum. As it hit the stone it exploded, glass flying through the gaps in its shroud. And in that moment Whitewood raised his hands and covered the sides of her face with them. He pressed her against the wall. She felt the warmth of his breath in her hair, noted it, as though from a distance. She closed her eyes.
It seemed like hours that they stood there, until the bombers moved away, until the bombs were distant thunder; a brief respite until the next wave came. His grip on her loosened, and then he released her and stepped away; one step. She turned and looked at him, feeling the grind of broken glass under her heels. His face was black, white and grey in the moonlight.
‘Can you hear?’ he said, or that was what she thought he said, because she could just see his lips moving; her head was ringing. She shook her head, as though coming up from water and trying to clear her ears of it. He put his hands to her shoulders again, a gesture of reassurance.
She was trembling now, but her legs felt strong again. She stared at him, his face white in the moonlight, saying words which she could not hear. And she felt the vast emptiness within her, as wide and without foothold as the space of the Stair Hall, filled with immense and flickering violence.
She took hold of his face and she kissed him. Without looking into his eyes. Without knowing why. Reaching out as she had for the wall, for something solid, for something which could be touched which would not hurt her. His clean-shaven face was surprisingly soft, the smell of him the smell of cigars and the slight mustiness of unwashed wool.
He froze under her touch for a moment, and then his lips parted beneath hers. As he pushed her back against the cold marble, his hand covered the back of her head, cradling her skull against the stone.
CHAPTER FIVE
1940
BASEMENT VAULTS, THE MIRRORMAKERS’ CLUB
It was morning, but you could not tell, in the basement vaults. All of it was the same white-painted brick, which raised the light level from dull to slightly less than dull. As Livy folded tea towels for Peggy, she wondered if she had dreamt the night before. It seemed so unreal in this greyed-out, prosaic light.
Peggy was talking about their guest. ‘I don’t mind it, of course, as long as he registers for temporary rations. He’ll be wanting bacon and eggs, no doubt, and things are different now. Bill already gets through the sugar ration so quickly I’m using saccharin tablets. I can’t offer Mr Whitewood the food he used to get, I can’t.’ She said it as though repetition would erase the unthinking servitude of a lifetime. As though she were frightened that she might, unwittingly, offer Jonathan Whitewood everything. After the night before, Livy understood it completely: his stillness drew things from one.
It had been a passionate kiss, with nothing held back. The length of Whitewood’s body against hers. And then she had pushed him away, and they had stood apart from each other in the blue darkness. They had gone down the stairs to the basement side by side, him holding up his cigarette lighter, the flame dancing. Once, she had briefly lost her footing, put out he
r hands like a dancer trying to keep her balance, and his hand had flashed out and caught hers, held her fingertips, just for a moment, to keep her steady.
‘The painting,’ she said.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said.
In the bomb shelter with Bill and Peggy, they had kept wide of each other like repelling magnets. At the next lull, he went out, saying that he wanted to go up to the Blue Room. They had let him go.
‘I hope he’ll be reasonable.’ Peggy was still fretting.
Livy put her hand out. ‘I think he’s coming down.’
She had sensed him, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. And he entered the room silently, fully dressed in a grey double-breasted suit and red silk tie, a crease in his shirt, which ran like a scar from the left point of his collar down to where it tucked into his trousers. If he had his valet with him, Livy thought, that would have been pressed out.
‘I thought you might show me the Document Room, Miss Baker,’ he said, once he had been served his tea, from old leaves, like everyone else.
*
Livy unlocked the section of the vaults where the archives had been put to protect them from the bombing. Jonathan followed her in, and the weighted door closed on its own behind them. Like the other basement rooms, the room was vaulted in white-painted brick. Before the war, grey metal shelves had been installed, awkwardly, for they were too tall for the vaulting, and stood away from the walls. There was a small desk with an anglepoise lamp, a chair, and a set of library steps by it.
‘This strange underground life you have down here,’ he said. Looking around the harshly lit room, with the smell of dust and paper in the air, so different from the red and gold and coloured marbles above.
‘I rather love it,’ she said. She walked along the shelves, one hand glancing off lines of buff-coloured boxes, their sides labelled in black ink in Miss Hardaker’s neat, spiky handwriting. She had gathered from Peggy that before the war, the boxes had lived on the first floor, on wooden shelves in the Hide, a room where Miss Hardaker had smoked, and taken telephone calls, and typed. Despite the two large windows that let the best of the city light into the room, it was dark, the light absorbed by the shelves of archive boxes. Here, under harsh electric light, they seemed less mysterious.
‘Where is the copy of Utopia by More?’ said Whitewood, running his finger along a box, and finding a thin layer of already-settled dust. ‘It used to live on the shelves in the News Room. I thought I might read it one evening.’
‘The valuable books went to Sussex, with the financial records,’ Livy said. ‘And just as well, because the News Room was destroyed a few weeks ago in a raid. We don’t go near it now.’
He turned away, saying nothing. His glacial serenity seemed rather arrogant to Livy. It was as though, with one kiss, he had used up a brief spark of attraction, and cast her aside, like a dead match. She was sure that men of his type kissed whomever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and that one was meant to be grateful.
‘If you tell me what you are looking for, it might be easier.’ She kept the ‘sir’ out of it. Its lack floated in the air between them, surprisingly noticeable.
Jonathan stared at her, aware of the faint scent of her perfume – lily of the valley. It reminded him of the hothouses at Redlands. It made him feel heady, slightly drunk.
But he knew his face wore its habitual mask of coolness: that she would not sense his agitation. He remembered how cold and distant his father had been, and thought how ridiculous it was that such chilliness should be handed down in the blood, but how often he had made use of that innate iciness of manner. Even when he smiled, he knew, it had the quality of winter about it. Only with action could he convince someone that he lived and breathed as they did.
‘I’m looking for traces of two of my ancestors, by the name of Kinsburg. Ashton and Charlotte,’ he said.
‘I’ve seen the Kinsburg arms in the window of the Dining Hall,’ said Livy.
‘Yes, well, you would. Ashton Kinsburg, my great-grandfather, largely financed the building of this Club, and served on the committee that approved its design. He was descended from one of the great glass families, and he wanted to make this building proof of his wealth and taste.’ He leaned against the table, and attempted to smile. ‘It’s rather important,’ he said.
She watched the cigarette lighter turn in his hand, noticed the tension in the movement. Whatever this thing was, he wanted to know it very badly.
‘Where would you like me to start?’ she said. ‘Do you have a date? And is there anything particular you are looking for?’
He considered her for a moment. Then, from his pocket, he took a folded piece of paper. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is an extract of a letter from my grandmother Isabel, Ashton’s daughter, written forty years ago. Forgive my poor handwriting: I copied it out.’
Livy opened the piece of paper, and stared at the lines scrawled in pencil:
You must understand, our lives were ordinary, until the building of the Mirrormakers’ Club. It was during the business of the building that everything changed, and by 1841 the happy, golden summers I had known as a child at Redlands had come to an end.
‘Redlands?’ she said.
He looked down. ‘Our family estate.’
‘And you’re looking for anything to do with Ashton and Charlotte?’
‘Anything at all.’ He said it too quickly.
She nodded. ‘I’ll begin down here, with the files on the building of the Mirrormakers’ Club. I’ll check upstairs too, in the Hide. Miss Hardaker was much more familiar with things than me, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d started to compile an index or hand list.’
‘And you will be thorough?’ It was the first uncertainty she had seen on his face.
‘Utterly vigilant, I promise,’ she said. ‘I rather like the idea of solving a mystery – it is a mystery, isn’t it?’
He looked sharply at her. ‘Yes.’ He tried to smile. ‘As you like Woman and Looking Glass so much, you should know. It’s about her.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The woman in the painting. According to family legend, she’s Charlotte Kinsburg, my great-grandmother.’
‘I’m sorry?’
He smiled. ‘Now you’re interested.’
‘Well, of course I am! But – why is her name not on the frame?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. Why are you so attached to the painting?’
She considered it. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ she said. ‘She seems – present. There’s a vividness to her.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s as though she might come to life at any moment, as though she is itching to get out of the position she is standing in.’
They laughed in unison, but when silence fell again, she felt his eyes upon her.
‘Miss Baker,’ he said. ‘What was it about? Last night?’ He looked at her face: so pale, almost bloodless. Beautiful, but as though glazed by something, separating her from the world. Like him: her touch had shown her to be more, but now, he felt as though she hardly existed, her presence a shadow.
Her lips tightened. ‘I don’t know. Does one have to explain everything?’
‘Not at all. I was just curious why an apparently respectable young woman would make a play for a married man old enough to be her father.’
A hit, he thought: she looked stricken. ‘Make a play? I wouldn’t call it that. And why did you kiss me back?’
He looked at her, eye to eye.
‘Because I wanted to. I haven’t done something completely selfish in a long time.’
For a moment she forgot to breathe. The way he looked at her took her back to the precise moment when he had put his hand around the back of her head, his mouth against hers. A sudden brightness in the Stair Hall, real or imagined, she could hardly tell, so that for a moment the colours of the marble sang, as vivid as the face in the painting. ‘Perhaps we could forget it.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘
So, Charlotte and Ashton Kinsburg are who I am looking for.’ She wrote their names down on a pad. ‘You must have things to do,’ she said. ‘Why not leave me to make a first pass at things? Lunch is always at half past twelve on the dot, and Mrs Holliday has been cooking a casserole in a straw box since last night. I have some housekeeping to do, then will look for things here, and check Miss Hardaker’s room. As soon as I stumble on something I will show it to you.’
‘I consider myself dismissed,’ he said. He cleared his throat. ‘Thank you. And in exchange, after lunch, shall I move Woman and Looking Glass?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said. Her gaze was already fixed on the lines of boxes on the shelves.
CHAPTER SIX
1940
NORTH LANDING, THE MIRRORMAKERS’ CLUB
Livy sang as she cleaned the vast expanse of red carpet on the north landing of the Stair Hall. She sang over the clunk-whine of the carpet cleaner and the sound of men working on the other landing: Bill and his mates, patching up the broken demi-lune, robbing the coloured marble walls of more winter light. It occurred to her, startled by the novelty of the feeling, that she was happy. After Jonathan had left her in the basement room, she had pulled out seven boxes of archives on the subject of the Club’s construction, and they waited for her downstairs while she completed her duties.
Her thoughts kept returning to the portrait. Charlotte, she thought. Her name is Charlotte.
She paused on the threshold of the Dining Hall. The entrance was just a few steps from the top of the stairs. There was a clock at the entrance, and Bill wound it every week. It was a head taller than her and an original feature of the Club, the case of carved mahogany around a large dial of faded white, with a glass panel set in its front, so that one could watch the stately swing of the pendulum. The swish and sigh of it, the stateliness of it, the emphasis, seemed to slow time itself. It gave each moment its weight. Turned time, which hurried by so often, into something one could watch, hear and measure. She stood, transfixed by it, and the happiness settled, a warmth in the pit of her stomach.
